What I Use SingularAgent For

Nightly Backups

One thing I use SingularAgent for is nightly backups of my computer files to a file storage website. First, SingularAgent zips the folder on my computer. Next, it opens Google Chrome and browses to the website. After the correct folder is selected, the zip file is uploaded. Once the upload has been completed, SingularAgent browses to the Gmail website. An email is sent to me letting me know that the backup has been completed successfully. This process takes less than 5 minutes for SingularAgent to complete. While saving 5 minutes doesn't seem like a lot of time, it is one less thing for me to worry about and can be done while I am sleeping.

Monthly Financial Summary Email

Stage 1

The other thing I use SingularAgent for is to send me an email once a month containing a summary of my financial transactions for the previous month. I use USAA for my banking and I like to keep track of my spending habits. First, SingularAgent opens Google Chrome and browses to the USAA website. It types my username and password and logs me in to a security code page. USAA recently updated their security login practices. They used to require a PIN and security question. Now they present the user with three options for sending a security code: mobile phone number, email, or app. SingularAgent selects email and then browses to Gmail waiting for the email to arrive. Once the email from USAA has been received, SingularAgent clicks to open the email, copies the security code, deletes the email, and switches back to the security code page. The security code is then pasted into the textbox, the Next button is clicked, and now I can see my USAA accounts. SingularAgent then proceeds to copy the current balance of the following accounts and saves the information for later: checking. savings, credit card, and insurance.

The copy balance process works like this:

1. The mouse cursor is moved to the beginning of the dollar value

2. The mouse click down occurs

3. The mouse cursor is moved to the end of the dollar value (the dollar value is now selected)

4. The mouse click up occurs

5. The CTRL + C key press command is sent by SingularAgent to copy the value to the computer's clipboard

6. The dollar value on the clipboard for that account is saved to disk

Next, SingularAgent clicks on the checking account to see the previous month's transactions. The Google Chrome developer tools are loaded by sending the CTRL + SHIFT + I key press command. Once the developer tools are loaded, SingularAgent copies the HTML of the page and parses the transaction information. The transaction information includes the date, description, and amount. Once that information is saved to disk, the same process is completed for the credit card transactions.

Now that all the checking and credit card transactions have been temporarily saved, it is time for SingularAgent to open my Excel worksheet. Each transaction gets a separate row and the details are pasted into the appropriate columns. Finally, SingularAgent sends me an email stating that the financial transactions are ready to be reviewed. Stage 1 of this two stage process is complete. Whew!

Stage 2

I start by looking at the Account and Category columns for each transaction row in my Excel worksheet. In Stage 1, SingularAgent looks at the description to determine what is the Account and Category should be. For example: if the description contains the text "DisneyPLUS" then SingularAgent recognizes that the Account is "Disney" and the Category is "Entertainment". If the description has not been previously associated with an Account and Category, then the text "Other" will be filled in by default. I update the code for all the transactions that don't fill in a specific Account and Category so that they will be corrected in the next month's set of transactions. After I finish that, I start stage 2 of the Monthly Financial Summary Email process for SingularAgent. SingularAgent opens Excel and copies each column value for the previous month's transactions. SingularAgent then generates a summary and sends an email to Deirdre and I. The email looks like this:

Now I have a record stored on my computer and an email that can let me quickly see information about the previous month. What's nice is that after developing this process, I now have a general set of methods that I can use to do similar things on any website or application.

Let me know if you have any questions!